Perfecting simple Italian at Concord’s Farfalle

Gina Nasson (right) supervises as Sheila Batson chops vegetables at a cooking class at Farfalle, the Concord shop and cafe Nasson owns with her husband.Robert Ferstenberg

CONCORD — Jazz playing softly in the background, the creak of an oven door, the whir of an immersion blender, the hum of laughter and conversation. These are the welcoming sounds at a cooking class on a recent chilly night at Farfalle, an Italian gourmet shop and cafe owned by wife and husband Gina Nasson and Jeff Nedeau.

Farfalle may not be the place where everyone knows your name, but it's close. Nasson, who is teaching tonight, knows about 95 percent of her customers, and several of the six students are class veterans. One of them, Mary Fenoglio of Concord, says Nasson has taught her a lot of valuable "little tricks." Robert Ferstenberg, also from Concord, says the charm of the classes is that they focus on simple cooking with no exotic ingredients. That certainly covers this night's two soups, plus Calabrian vegetable stew and focaccia. The emphasis on Italian cuisine stems from the owners' Southern Italian roots. "We grew up in families that cooked and ate and drank wine," Nasson says.

Nasson, who managed Stellina, in Watertown, for 15 years before opening Farfalle in 2007, displays good humor, patience, and a quiet authority as the class proceeds. She says she occasionally misses "that Saturday-night pace [of a restaurant]. You get really psyched up, you have tons of reservations and you have to figure out where to put everyone."

Those organizational skills are on display in class. After directing students to chop carrots, onions, and garlic for a roasted carrot and mascarpone soup, Nasson quickly assembles focaccia dough using 00 Italian flour, yeast, salt, and olive oil (she advises looking for estate-bottled oil with a name on the tin, rather than blended versions for lower prices). When someone jokes that she measures "precisely" — meaning "not!" — she replies, "That's how my grandmother taught me!"

One student helps Nasson stretch the dough on a baking sheet and dimple it with olive oil. A short time later, it's in the oven, and prepping for the ribollita and the vegetable stew is underway.

A Tuscan soup, originally made by reboiling broth made the day before, the ribollita includes cabbage, onion, tomatoes, and cannellini beans and is finished with stale bread. The Calabrian stew is "basically tons of vegetables," including eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, fennel, potatoes, kale, and cabbage. "You throw everything in the pot, you turn it on and cover it," says Nasson. It uses up everything in the refrigerator. Though both soups and the stew happen to be vegetarian, chunks of cooked chicken or turkey can go in at the end.

"It's not a lot of fussy technique that I do, it's more about the process," Nasson says. As the dishes cook, students sip Calabrian red wine, work a frighteningly efficient table-style can opener, and chat about classes past and future ("The next time you give a class on meatballs, I'm coming," says Fenoglio), the relative merits of pecorino and Parmigiano-Reggiano, and possible twists on the night's recipes.

Farfalle also offers Thursday-night wine tasting and multicourse dinners with wine served in the shop.

Shortly after the class has sampled the finished dishes, the door opens, admitting another customer whom Nasson knows. He's looking for dinner, and she tells him what the students have just cooked.

Which dish do you like the best? he asks the class. "The ribollita," says Isabel Zellmann-Rohrer of Concord.

"So glad you were open!" he says as Nasson packs some up for him.

"Timing is everything," she says.

Farfalle 26 Concord Crossing, Concord, 978-369-2900, farfalleitalianmarket.com. Classes cost $75 per person and begin again in January.

Related coverage:

- Recipe for ribollita

- Brush up on your own cooking skills, or give a class as a gift